Jonathan is the owner/operator of Queenstown's Woolworths franchise (no relation to Woolworths in the UK...think M&S instead) located in the old centre of town known as the Hexagon.
It was fascinating to be able to talk to Jonathan about the benefits and challenges of being a franchise business in the shadow of a corporate brand.
Woolworths was founded in 1931 by Max Sonnenberg. His belief that success lies in providing customers with superior quality merchandise at reasonable prices has been instrumental in establishing Woolworths as one of South Africa’s leading retail chains – a benchmark for excellence and an icon of quality.
Woolworths core philosophy is underpinned by quality, offering customers consistently high quality merchandise at affordable prices and incorporating innovative developments across the business. Building lifetime relationships with customers remains critical to the business’ success, ensuring that they understand and meet these needs.
Today, Woolworths is a retail chain that extends throughout Africa and into the Middle East, trading through more than 300 stores.
A number of Woolworths stores (more than 150) are run on a franchise basis like Queenstown. Over a third of WW franchises are black-owned and WW are focusing on increasing that proportion.
Woolworths is committed to using its surplus products to help ease the burden of poverty in South Africa. Each year, Woolworths gives away R12 million’s worth of its clothes and R155 million of its surplus food to under privileged South Africans. These figures represent the costs to company, not the retail price of the items.
It was fantastic to meet with Jonothan and his team today, a big thank you goes out to the Rotarians for arranging this for me.
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